I still remember watching it on the black and white television in our living-room clueless as to what all the fuss was about then going outside to play with the black and white kids who filled our neighborhood.
It was only recently that I learned the International Civil Rights Museum is in-fact a for-profit corporation owned by a group of local Greensboro fat cats that include former Guilford County Commissioner Skip Alston. Remember when I wrote, "If there's something in it for you then you're not doing it for us." Well I guess I should have realized what was going on because Skip Alston has never done a good deed that didn't somehow turn a profit for Skip and the International Civil Rights Museum is no exception.
For starters: why does Skip want the City of Greensboro to give Skip money to give to the Guilford County Schools to pay for school buses to haul students to the museum for free admission? So Skip can get a management fee for having counted the money, that's why. If Skip's real concern were the students he would be asking the City to give the money directly to Guilford County Schools.
Then there's an issue with Federal Income Taxes. Looking at the 5th document displayed, if they only owe $900,000, why does their 990 say they owe $5.7 million? Perhaps someone else can make sense of these documents 'cause everyone I know who's looked at them so far says the numbers don't work. You see, back a few years ago when this all came up we thought everything was cool because we thought the museum was a non profit but now that we know for a fact that International Civil Rights Museum is in-fact a for-profit company... Well, the same tax rules don't apply.
Quotes from today's News and Record:
"The red ink, they said, stems from annual expenses of about $800,000 linked to the complicated operating structure required by federal and state tax credits...
The city’s added $1.5 million and amplified fund-raising by the museum should be enough to carry it through 2016, when the tax credits expire along with their operating demands, Alston said...
The partnerships were classified as for-profit ventures, so they are subject to the taxes that create the credits, which banks and other investors bought by contributing to the local project.
Private investors then used the credits to lower their overall state and federal taxes on other business ventures...
If the city provides the requested assistance and fundraising initiatives succeed, the museum should be in good standing to reach the tax-credit sunset, when its ownership and operation should revert to the Sit-in Movement nonprofit, Alston said. "
And this from one of Skip's partners,
“The only money we owe in the whole world is that $900,000,” Harris said. “Everything else is paid off in full.”
Well if everything else is paid off then Skip, Harris and company must be looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, right. They don't need our help.
And why would we bail out a private corporation in the first place? Bailing out a rich local private corporation is how the City of Greensboro got stuck with the Bessemer Shopping Center that Skip Alston has been trying to get the City of Greensboro to gift him. As a matter of fact: the corporation that was bailed out was Weaver Reality whose owner, Katheryn Weaver, just happens to be the CEO of the Weaver Foundation. And who is one of Skip Alston's partners in the International Civil Rights Museum? None other than Skip Moore, President of the Weaver Foundation.
Coincidence? Orgies are hardly a coincidence when everyone is sleeping in the same bed all the time. They are bound to happen.
So if the International Civil Rights Museum isn't going broke then why is Skip asking for money? And if the International Civil Rights Museum is going broke why would we want to give money to the same people who ran it out of business in the first place? So Skip and company can go broke again? What happens the next time they come back to the well?
Look, I want to see the International Civil Rights Museum stay in business but if there's anything that life has taught me it's that you can't keep doing things the wrong way and expect the right results. Skip and company have been skimming off the top for as long as we've known them and to give them more money-- any money-- will simply encourage more of the same behavior. It's called, enabling, look it up.
So here's my proposal: Leave Skip and company to their own devices. If they stay afloat then fine. And if they go broke then that's fine too. But, do not, under any circumstance, give Skip Alston another dime in taxpayer money ever again. After all, what are the creditors going to do with a museum that won't create enormous losses on their part as well? When the banks and creditors go in they will find that Skip Alston and company removed everything of value many years ago. And at that point the creditors will be more than happy to sell the International Civil Rights Museum to a group of honest Greensboro investors for pennies on the dollar.
And if there are no honest Greensboro investors then Greensboro never deserved the International Civil Rights Museum in the first place.
